One 77-year-old’s search for the truth: 9/11, election fraud, illegal wars, Wall Street criminality, a stolen nuke, the neocon wars, control of the U.S. government by global corporations, the unjustified assault on Social Security, media complicity, and the "Great Recession" about to become the second Great Depression. "The most important truths are hidden from us by the powerful few who strive to steal the American dream by keeping We the People in the dark."

Paul Craig Roberts: US is Completely Busted, Non-Delivery of Gold - Crash the System, War in Ukraine

Greg Hunter

Published on Mar 11, 2014http://usawatchdog.com/united-states-... - Economist Dr. Paul Craig Roberts says, "The physical stock of gold in the West to meet delivery demand is diminishing rapidly. So, one day the Chinese will buy 100 tons of gold, and we won't be able to make delivery. That would crash the system. It would just pop. So, there are things that could crash it suddenly. Regardless . . . the economy is going to gradually sink because there are no jobs, or no good jobs. . . So, there is not a recovery. The U.S. is a busted state. It's completely busted."On the Federal Reserve money printing to prop up the economy, Dr. Roberts, who has a PhD in economics, contends, "I think they realize all the money printing does undermine the dollar, and if they lose the dollar, the game is over. So, they have to protect the dollar."

A New Recession and a New World Devoid of Washington’s Arrogance?Paul Craig RobertsJune 25, 2014. A final number for real US GDP growth in the first quarter of 2014 was released today. The number is not the 2.6% growth rate predicted by the know-nothing economists in January of this year. The number is a decline in GDP of -2.9 percent.The negative growth rate of -2.9 percent is itself an understatement. This number was achieved by deflating nominal GDP with an understated measure of inflation. During the Clinton regime, the Boskin Commission rigged the inflation measure in order to cheat Social Security recipients out of their cost-of-living adjustments. Anyone who purchases food, fuel, or anything knows that inflation is much higher than the officially reported number.It is possible that the drop in first quarter real GDP is three times the official number.Regardless, the difference is large between the January forecast of +2.6 percent growth and the decline as of the end of March of -2.9 percent.Any economist who is real and unpaid by Wall Street, the government, or the Establishment knew that the +2.6 percent forecast was a crock. Americans’ incomes have not grown except for the one percent, and the only credit growth is in student loans, as those many who cannot find jobs mistakenly turn to “education is the answer.” In an economy based on consumer demand, the absence of income and credit growth means no economic growth.The US economy cannot grow because corporations pushed by Wall Street have moved the US economy offshore. US manufactured products are made offshore. Look at the labels on your clothes, your shoes, your eating and cooking utensils, your computers, whatever. US professional jobs such as software engineering have been moved offshore. An economy with an offshored economy is not an economy. All of this happened in full view, while well-paid free market shills declared that Americans were benefiting from giving America’s middle class jobs to China and India.I have been exposing these lies for a decade or two, which is why I am no longer invited to speak at American universities or to American economic associations. Economists love the money that they receive for lying. A truth teller is the last thing that they want in their midst.An official decline of -2.9 percent in the first quarter implies a second quarter GDP decline. Two declines in a row is the definition of recession.Imagine the consequences of a recession. It means that years of unprecedented Quantitative Easing failed to revive the economy. It means that years of Keynesian fiscal deficits failed to revive the economy. Neither fiscal nor monetary policy worked. What then can revive the economy?Nothing except to force the return of the economy that the anti-American corporations moved offshore.This would require credible government. Unfortunately, the US government has been losing credibility since the second term of the Clinton regime. It has none left.Today no one anywhere in the world believes the US government except the brain dead Americans who read and listen to the “mainstream media.” Washington’s propaganda dominates the minds of Americans, but produces laughter and scorn everywhere else.The poor US economic outlook has brought America’s two largest business lobbies–the US Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers (or what is left of them) into conflict with the Obama regime’s threat of further sanctions against Russia.According to Bloomberg News, beginning tomorrow (June 26), the business groups will run advertisements in the New York Times, Wall St Journal, and Washington Post opposing any further sanctions on Russia. The US business organizations say that the sanctions will harm their profits and result in layoffs of American workers.Thus, America’s two largest business organizations, important sources of political campaign contributions, have finally added their voice to the voices of German, French, and Italian business.Everyone, except the brainwashed American public, knows that the “crisis in Ukraine” is entirely the work of Washington. European and American businesses are asking: “why should our profits and our workers take hits in behalf of Washington’s propaganda against Russia.”Obama has no answer. Perhaps his neocon scum, Victoria Nuland, Samantha Powers, and Susan Rice can come up with an answer. Obama can look to the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and Weekly Standard to explain why millions of Americans and Europeans should suffer in order that Washington’s theft of Ukraine is not endangered.Washington’s lies are catching up with Obama. German chancellor Merkel is Washington’s complete whore, but German industry is telling Washington’s whore that they value their business with Russia more than they value suffering in behalf of Washington’s empire. French businessmen are asking Hollande what he proposes to do with their unemployed workers if Holland goes along with Washington. Italian businesses are reminding that government, to the extent that Italy has one, that uncouth Americans have no tastes and that sanctions on Russia mean a hit to Italy’s most famous and best recognized economic sector–high style luxury products.Dissent with Washington and Washington’s two-bit puppet rulers in Europe is spreading. The latest poll in Germany reveals that three-quarters of Germany’s population reject permanent NATO bases in Poland and the Baltic states. The former Czechoslovakia, currently Slovakia and the Czech Republic, although NATO members, have rejected NATO and American troops and bases on their territory. Recently, a German minister said that pleasing Washington required giving free oral sex for nothing in return.The strains that Washington’s morons are putting on NATO might break the organization apart. Pray that it does. NATO’s excuse for existence disappeared with the Soviet collapse 23 years ago. Yet, Washington has increased NATO far beyond the borders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO now runs from the Baltics to Central Asia. In order to have a reason for NATO’s continued expensive operation, Washington has had to construct an enemy out of Russia.Russia has no intention of being Washington’s or NATO’s enemy and has made that perfectly clear. But Washington’s military/security complex, which absorbs about $1 trillion annually of US hard-pressed taxpayers’ money, needs an excuse to keep the profits flowing.Unfortunately the Washington morons picked a dangerous enemy. Russia is a nuclear armed power, a country of vast dimensions, and with a strategic alliance with China.Only a government drowning in arrogance and hubris or a government run by psychopaths and sociopaths would pick such an enemy.Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has pointed out to Europe that Washington’s policies in the Middle East and Libya are not merely total failures but also devastatingly harmful to Europe and Russia. The fools in Washington have removed the governments that suppressed the jihadists. Now the violent jihadists are unleashed. In the Middle East the jihadists are at work remaking the artificial boundaries set by the British and French in the aftermath of World War I.Europe, Russia and China have Muslim populations and now must worry if the violence that Washington has unleashed will bring destabilization to regions of Europe, Russia and China.No one anywhere in the world has any reason to love Washington. Least of all Americans, who are being bled dry in order that Washington can parade military force around the world. Obama’s approval rating is a dismal 41 percent and no one wants Obama to remain in office once his second term is complete. In contrast, two-thirds of the Russian population want Putin to remain president after 2018.In March the poling agency, Public Opinion Research Center, released a report that Putin’s approval rating stood at 76 percent despite the agitation against him by the US financed Russian NGOs, hundreds of fifth column institutions that Washington established in Russia during the past two decades.On top of US political troubles, the US dollar is in trouble. The dollar is kept afloat by rigged financial markets and Washington’s pressure on its vassal states to support the dollar’s value by printing their own currencies and purchasing dollars. In order to keep the dollar afloat, much of the world will be inflated. When people finally catch on and rush into gold, the Chinese will have it all.Sergey Glazyev, an adviser to President Putin, has told the Russian president than only an anti-dollar alliance that crashes the US dollar can halt Washington’s aggression. That has long been my opinion. There can be no peace as long as Washington can print more money with which to finance more wars.As the Chinese government stated, it is time to “de-Americanize the world.” Washington’s leadership has totally failed the world, producing nothing but lies, violence, death, and the promise of more violence. America is exceptional only in the fact that Washington has, without remorse, destroyed in whole or part seven countries in the new 21st century. Unless Washington is replaced with more humane leadership, life on earth has no future.

It turns out that Ukraine's new president, Petro Poroshenko, has been
working for the U.S. government since at least 2006 and they knew he was
corrupt. There's not much point in staging a coup if you don't influence who
is placed in power in the aftermath. Of course in order for a puppet
government to be effective, they can't be perceived as such. You
wouldn't want the natives to get restless would you?

"Poroshenko was tainted by credible corruption allegations, but wielded significant influence within OU; Poroshenko's price had to be
paid."

The U.S. government knew Poroshenko was dirty, but he was influential, and arguably their most dependable mole.

Perhaps the most interesting revelation comes from a 2009 cable
where Poroshenko told then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton he
supported "the opening of a U.S. diplomatic presence in Crimea" and "He
emphasized the importance of Crimea, and said that having U.S.
representation there would be useful for Ukraine." Poroshenko's role as
an informant for the U.S. government continued in cables in 2010 as well.

Reading through the cables, I have to wonder if
Poroshenko was actually breaking Ukrainian law by sharing the kind of
strategic information that he did. Considering that this information was
certainly used when planning the coup against Yanukovich, one could
argue that he committed treason.

Poroshenko, however, isn't the only Ukrainian politician mentioned.
For example, the cables mention the scandal surrounding Oleksandr
Turchynov's destruction of SBU documents tying Julia Tymoshenko to
organized crime, and note that the accusation that Tymoshenko wanted
Turchynov get the Interior Minister position so that she could gather
damaging information on her enemies. The cable
refers to this accusation as "not farfetched". Turchynov went on to be
installed as the acting president of Ukraine in the provisional
government.

In order to grasp the extent of the U.S. government's tinkering in Ukraine it is worth reading the documents for yourself.

I wish I had only good news to bring to readers, or even one item of
good news. Alas, goodness has ceased to be a feature of US policy and
simply cannot be found in any words or deeds emanating from Washington
or the capitals of its European vassal states. The Western World has
succumbed to evil.

US war doctrine has been changed. US nuclear weapons are no longer
restricted to a retaliatory force, but have been elevated to the role of
preemptive nuclear attack. Washington pulled out of the Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty with Russia and is developing and deploying an ABM
shield. Washington is demonizing Russia and Russia’s President with
shameless lies and propaganda, thus preparing the populations of the US
and its client states for war with Russia.

Washington has been convinced by neoconservatives that Russian
strategic nuclear forces are in run down and unprepared condition and
are sitting ducks for attack. This false belief is based on out-of-date
information, a decade old, such as the argument presented in “The Rise
of U.S. Nuclear Primacy” by Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press in the
April 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs, a publication of the Council on Foreign Relations, an organization of American elites. http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/61508/keir-a-lieber-and-daryl-g-press/the-rise-of-us-nuclear-primacy

Regardless of the condition of Russian nuclear forces, the success of
Washington’s first strike and degree of protection provided by
Washington’s ABM shield against retaliation, the article I posted by
Steven Starr, “The Lethality of Nuclear Weapons,” makes clear that
nuclear war has no winners. Everyone dies. http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/05/30/lethality-nuclear-weapons/

In an article published in the December 2008 issue of Physics Today,
three atmospheric scientists point out that even the substantial
reduction in nuclear arsenals that the Strategic Offensive Reductions
Treaty hoped to achieve, from 70,000 warheads in 1986 to 1700-2200
warheads by the end of 2012, did not reduce the threat that nuclear war
presents to life on earth. The authors conclude that in addition to the
direct blast effects of hundreds of millions of human fatalities, “the
indirect effects would likely eliminate the majority of the human
population.” The stratospheric smoke from firestorms would cause nuclear
winter and agricultural collapse. Those who did not perish from blast
and radiation would starve to death. http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/ToonRobockTurcoPhysicsToday.pdf
Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev understood this. Unfortunately,
no successor US government has. As far as Washington is concerned, death
is what happens to others, not to “the exceptional people.” (The SORT
agreement apparently failed. According to the Stockholm International
Peace Research Institute, the nine nuclear-armed states still possess a
total of 16,300 nuclear weapons. http://rt.com/news/166132-nuclear-weapons-report-obama/ )

It is a fact that Washington has policymakers who think, incorrectly,
that nuclear war is winnable and who regard nuclear war as a means of
preventing the rise of Russia and China as checks on Washington’s
hegemony over the world. The US government, regardless of party in
office, is a massive threat to life on earth. European governments,
which think of themselves as civilized, are not, because they enable
Washington’s pursuit of hegemony. It is this pursuit that threatens
life with extinction. The ideology that grants “exceptional,
indispensable America” supremacy is an enormous threat to the world.

The destruction of seven countries in whole or in part by the West in
the 21st century, with the support of “Western civilization” and the
Western media, comprises powerful evidence that the leadership of the
Western world is devoid of moral conscience and human compassion. Now
that Washington is armed with its false doctrine of “nuclear primacy,”
the outlook for humanity is very bleak.

Washington has begun the run up to the Third World War, and Europeans
seem to be on board. As recently as November 2012 NATO Secretary
General Rasmussen said that NATO does not regard Russia as an enemy.
Now that the White House Fool and his European vassals have convinced
Russia that the West is an enemy, Rasmussen declared that “we must adapt
to the fact that Russia now considers us its adversary” by beefing up
Ukraine’s military along with those of Eastern and Central Europe.

Last month Alexander Vershbow, former US ambassador to Russia,
currently NATO Deputy Secretary General, declared Russia to be the enemy
and said that the American and European taxpayers need to fork over for
the military modernization “not just of Ukraine, but also Moldova,
Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan.”

It is possible to see these calls for more military spending as just
the normal functioning of agents for the US military/security complex.
Having lost “the war on terror” in Iraq and Afghanistan, Washington
needs a replacement and has set about resurrecting the Cold War.

This is probably how the armaments industry, its shills, and part of
Washington sees it. But the neoconservatives are more ambitious. They
are not pursuing merely more profits for the military/security complex.
Their goal is Washington’s hegemony over the world, which means
reckless actions such as the strategic threat that the Obama regime,
with the complicity of its European vassals, has brought to Russia in
Ukraine.

Since last autumn the US government has been lying through its teeth
about Ukraine, blaming Russia for the consequences of Washington’s
actions, and demonizing Putin exactly as Washington demonized Gaddafi,
Saddam Hussein, Assad, the Taliban, and Iran. The presstitute media and
the European capitals have seconded the lies and propaganda and repeat
them endlessly. Consequently, the US public’s attitude toward Russia
moved sharply negative.

How do you think Russia and China see this? Russia has witnessed
NATO brought to its borders, a violation of the Reagan-Gorbachev
understandings. Russia has witnessed the US pull out of the ABM treaty
and develop a “star wars” shield. (Whether or not the shield would work
is immaterial. The purpose of the shield is to convince the politicians
and the public that Americans are safe.) Russia has witnessed
Washington change the role of nuclear weapons in its war doctrine from
deterrent to preemptive first strike. And now Russia listens to a daily
stream of lies from the West and witnesses the slaughter by
Washington’s vassal in Kiev of civilians in Russian Ukraine, branded
“terrorists” by Washington, by such weapons as white phosphorus with not
a peep of protest from the West.

Massive attacks by artillery and air strikes on homes and apartments
in Russian Ukraine were conducted on the 25th anniversary of Tiananmen
Square, while Washington and its puppets condemned China for an event
that did not happen. As we now know, there was no massacre in Tiananmen
Square. It was just another Washington lie like Tonkin Gulf, Saddam
Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Assad’s use of chemical weapons,
Iranian nukes, etc. It is an amazing fact that the world lives in a
false reality created by Washington’s lies.

The movie, The Matrix, is a true depiction of life in the West. The
population lives in a false reality created for them by their rulers. A
handful of humans have escaped the false existence and are committed to
bringing humans back to reality. They rescue Neo, “The One,” who they
believe correctly to have the power to free humans from the false
reality in which they live. Morpheus, the leader of the rebels, explains
to Neo:

“The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when
you’re inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers,
lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save.
But until we do, these people are still a part of that system, and that
makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are
not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly
dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.”

I experience this every time I write a column. Protests from those
determined not to be unplugged arrive in emails and on those websites
that expose their writers to slander by government trolls in comment
sections. Don’t believe real reality, they insist, believe the false
reality.

The Matrix even encompasses part of the Russian and Chinese
population, especially those educated in the West and those susceptible
to Western propaganda, but on the whole those populations know the
difference between lies and truth. The problem for Washington is that
the propaganda that prevails over the Western peoples does not prevail
over the Russian and Chinese governments.

How do you think China reacts when Washington declares the South
China Sea to be an area of US national interests, allocates 60 percent
of its vast fleet to the Pacific, and constructs new US air and naval
bases from the Philippines to Vietnam?

Suppose all Washington intends is to keep taxpayer funding alive for
the military/security complex which launders some of the taxpayers’
money and returns it as political campaign contributions. Can Russia
and China take the risk of viewing Washington’s words and deeds in this
limited way?

So far the Russians, and only the Russians (and Chinese), have
remained sensible. Lavrov, the Foreign Minister said: “At this stage, we
want to give our partners a chance to calm down. We’ll see what happens
next. If absolutely baseless accusations against Russia continue, it
there are attempts to pressure us with economic leverage, then we may
reevaluate the situation.”

If the White House Fool, Washington’s media whores and European
vassals convince Russia that war is in the cards, war will be in the
cards. As there is no prospect whatsoever of NATO being able to mount a
conventional offensive threat against Russia anywhere near the size and
power of the German invasion force in 1941 that met with destruction,
the war will be nuclear, which will mean the end of all of us.

Keep that firmly in mind as Washington and its media whores continue
to beat the drums for war. Keep in mind also that a long history proves
beyond all doubt that everything Washington and the presstitute media
tells you is a lie serving an undeclared agenda. You cannot rectify the
situation by voting Democrat instead of Republican or by voting
Republican instead of Democrat.

Thomas Jefferson told us his solution: “The tree of liberty must be
refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It
is its natural manure.”

On Wednesday, June 11th, CNN headlined "U.S. Sends B-2 Stealth Bombers to Europe," and
reported that "they arrived in Europe this week for training." Wikipedia notes
that B-2s were "originally designed primarily as a nuclear bomber,"
and that "The B-2 is the only aircraft that can carry large
air-to-surface standoff weapons in a
stealth configuration."

Some historical background is necessary here, so that a reader can understand why this is happening -- the switch to an objective of
actually winning a nuclear war (as opposed to deterring one). One cannot
understand what's happening now in Ukraine without knowing this bigger picture.

(This account is written under the assumption that the
reader already knows some of the allegations it contains, but not all of them,
and that the reader will click on the link wherever a given allegation requires
documentation and support.)

Consequently, for example, a recent CNN Poll has found that Americans'
fear of Russia has soared within just the past two years. Our news media
present a type of news "reporting" that places Russia's leader, Vladimir Putin,
into a very bad light, even when it's unjustified
by the facts.

The situation
now is thus rather similar to that right before World
War I, when the aristocracy in America decided that a pretext
had to be created for our going to war against Germany. That War had already started in Europe on 28 July 1914, and
President Wilson wanted to keep the U.S. out of it, but we ultimately joined it
on the side of J.P. Morgan and Company. This was documented in detail in an important
1985 book, Britain, America and the Sinews of War, 1914-1918, which was
well summarized in Business History Review, by noting that:
"J.P. Morgan & Co. served as Britain's financial and purchasing agent,
and the author makes especially good use of the Morgan Grenfell & Co.
papers in London to probe that relationship. Expanding British demand for U.S.
dollars to pay for North American imports made the politics of foreign exchange
absolutely central to Anglo-American relations. How to manage those politics
became the chief preoccupation of Her Majesty's representatives in the United
States," and most especially of Britain's financial and purchasing agent
in the U.S.

I also have reported on "Why Ukraine's Civil War Is of Global
Historical Importance." The article argued that
"This civil war is of massive historical importance, because
it re-starts the global Cold War, this time no longer under the
fig-leaf rationalization of an ideological battle between 'capitalism'
versus 'communism,' but instead more raw, as a struggle between, on the
one hand, the U.S. and West European aristocracies; and, on the other
hand, the newly emerging aristocracies of Russia and of China."
The conflict's origin, as recounted there, was told in its highest detail in
an article in the scholarly journal Diplomatic
History, about how U.S. President George H.W. Bush in 1990 fooled the
Soviet Union's leader Mikhail Gorbachev into Gorbachev's allowing the Cold War
to be ended without any assurance being given to the remaining rump country, his
own Russia, that NATO and its missiles and bombers won't expand right up to
Russia's doorstep and surround Russia with a first-strike ability to destroy
Russia before Russia will even have a chance to get its own nuclear weapons
into the air in order to destroy the U.S. right back in retaliation.

That old system -- "Mutually Assured
Destruction" or MAD, but actually very rational
from the public's perspective on both sides -- is gone. The U.S. increasingly
is getting nuclear primacy. Russia, surrounded by NATO nations and U.S. nuclear weapons,
would be able to be wiped out before its rusty and comparatively
puny military force could be mustered to respond. Whereas we
are not surrounded by their weapons, they are surrounded by ours. Whereas they
don't have the ability to wipe us out before we can respond, we have the
ability to wipe them out before they'll be able to respond. This is the reason
why America's aristocracy argue that MAD is dead. An article, "Environmental Consequences of Nuclear War" was
published in the December 2008 Physics Today, and it concluded that,
"the indirect effects ['nuclear winter'] would likely eliminate the
majority of the human population." (It would be even worse, and far
faster, than the expected harms from global warming.) However, aristocrats
separate themselves from the public, and so their perspective is not
necessarily the same as the public's. The perspective that J.P. Morgan and Co.
had in 1915 wasn't the perspective that the U.S. public had back then, and it
also wasn't the perspective that our President, Woodrow Wilson, did back then,
when we were a democracy. But it's even less clear today that we are a
democracy than it was in 1915. In that regard, things have only gotten worse in
America.

So, President Obama is now trying to persuade EU leaders
to join with him to complete this plan to replace MAD with a first-strike
nuclear capability that will eliminate Russia altogether from the world stage.

Obama clearly
means business here, and so the government that we have installed in Kiev
is bombing throughout southeastern Ukraine, in
order to convince the residents there that resistance will be futile. Part of
the short-term goal here is to get Russia to absorb the losses of all of
Ukraine's unpaid debts to Russia, so that far less of Ukraine's unpaid debts to
the IMF, U.S. and E.U., will remain
unpaid. It's basically an international bankruptcy proceeding, but without an
international bankruptcy court, using instead military means. It's like creditors
going to a bankrupt for repayment, and the one with the most gunmen gets paid,
while the others do not. This is the reason why the IMF ordered the leaders in
Kiev to put down the rebellion in Ukraine's southeast.
What's important to the IMF is not land, it's the Kiev government's continued
control over the assets in the rebelling part of Ukraine -- assets that will be
worth something in a privatization or sell-off to repay that debt. However, for
Obama, what is even more important than repaid debts is the continued dominance
of the U.S. dollar. Wall Street needs that.

Among other indications that the U.S. is now preparing a
nuclear attack against Russia is an article on May 23rd, "U.S. Tests Advanced Missile For NATO
Interceptor System," and also a June 10th report
from a website with good sources in Russian intelligence, which alleges that
Ukrainian President Petro "Poroshenko secretly met with ... [an] American delegation
headed by the Director of ... the CIA's National Clandestine Service,
Frank Archibald, which also included former CIA chief in Ukraine
Jeffrey Egan, the current -- Raymond Mark Davidson, Mark Buggy (CIA,
Istanbul), Andrzej Derlatka, a CIA agent in the Polish intelligence
Agency, and member of CIA Kevin Duffin who is working as senior Vice
President of the insurance company Brower. Poroshenko and Archibald
signed a paper entitled an 'Agreement on Military Cooperation between
the U.S. and Ukraine'"

Moreover, Obama isn't only beefing up our first-strike nuclear capability, but is also building
something new, called "Prompt Global Strike," to
supplement that nuclear force, by means of "a precision
conventional weapon strike" that, if launched against Russia from
next-door Ukraine, could wipe out Russia's nuclear weapons within just a minute
or so. That might be a fallback position, for Obama, in case the EU's leaders
(other than Netherlands and perhaps one or two others) might happen to decide
that they won't participate in our planned nuclear invasion of Russia.

Certainly, Obama means business here, but the big question is
whether he'll be able to get the leaders of other "democratic"
nations to go along with his first-strike plan.

The two likeliest things that can stop him, at this stage,
would be either NATO's breaking up, or else Putin's deciding to take a
political beating among his own public for simply not responding to our increasing
provocations. Perhaps Putin will decide that a temporary embarrassment for him
at home (for being "wimpy") will be better, even for just himself, than the
annihilation of his entire country would be. And maybe, if Obama pushes his
indubitable Superpower card too hard, he'll be even more embarrassed by this
conflict than Putin will be. After all, things like this and this aren't going to burnish Obama's
reputation in the history books, if he cares about that. But maybe he's
satisfied to be considered to have been George W. Bush II, just a far
better-spoken version: a more charming liar than the original. However, if
things come to a nuclear invasion, even a U.S. "victory" won't do much more for
Obama's reputation than Bush's "victory" in Iraq did for his. In fact, perhaps
Americans will then come to feel that George W. Bush wasn't America's worst
President, after all. Maybe the second half of the Bush-Obama Presidency will
be even worse than the first.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts - Former US Treasury Official, Co-Founder of Reaganomics, Economist & Acclaimed Author - Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is an American economist, a columnist and recent author of “The Failure Of Laissez Faire Capitalism”.
He served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan
Administration earning fame as a co-founder of Reaganomics. He is a
former editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week,
and Scripps Howard News Service. Dr. Roberts has testified before
congressional committees on 30 occasions on issues of economic policy.
He has also written extensively that during the 21st century the Bush
and Obama administrations have destroyed the US Constitution's
protections of Americans' civil liberties and has been a critic of both
Democratic and Republican administrations.

Roberts is a graduate of
the Georgia Institute of Technology and holds a Ph.D. from the
University of Virginia. He was a post-graduate at the University of
California, Berkeley and at Merton College, Oxford University. His first
scholarly article (Classica et Mediaevalia) was a reformulation of "The
Pirenne Thesis."

In Alienation and the Soviet Economy
(1971), Roberts explained the Soviet economy as the outcome of a
struggle between inordinate aspirations and a refractory reality. He
argued that the Soviet economy was not centrally planned, but that its
institutions, such as material supply, reflected the original Marxist
aspirations to establish a non-market mode of production. In Marx's Theory of Exchange
(1973), Roberts argued that Marx was an organizational theorist whose
materialist conception of history ruled out good will as an effective
force for change.

From 1975 to 1978, Roberts
served on the congressional staff. As economic counsel to Congressman
Jack Kemp he drafted the Kemp-Roth bill (which became the Economic
Recovery Tax Act of 1981) and played a leading role in developing
bipartisan support for a supply-side economic policy. His influential
1978 article for Harper's, while economic counsel to Senator Orrin Hatch, had Wall Street Journal
editor Robert L. Bartley give him an editorial slot, which he had until
1980. He was a senior fellow in political economy at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies, then part of Georgetown University.

From early 1981 to January
1982 he served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic
Policy. President Ronald Reagan and Treasury Secretary Donald Regan
credited him with a major role in the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981,
and he was awarded the Treasury Department's Meritorious Service Award
for "outstanding contributions to the formulation of United States
economic policy." Roberts resigned in January 1982 to become the first
occupant of the William E. Simon Chair for Economic Policy at the Center
for Strategic and International Studies, then part of Georgetown
University. He held this position until 1993. He went on to write The Supply-Side Revolution (1984), in which he explained the reformulation of macroeconomic theory and policy that he had helped to create.

He was a Distinguished
Fellow at the Cato Institute from 1993 to 1996.
He was a Senior Research
Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

In The New Color Line
(1995), Roberts argued that the Civil Rights Act was subverted by the
bureaucrats who applied it and, by being used to create status-based
privileges, became a threat to the Fourteenth Amendment in whose name it
was passed. In The Tyranny of Good Intentions
(2000), Roberts documented what he saw as the erosion of the
Blackstonian legal principles that ensure that law is a shield of the
innocent and not a weapon in the hands of government.

Kiev does not care about civilians in eastern Ukraine, and people
have to flee their homes amid daily bombings, Ukrainian refugees told RT
at a temporary camp in Russia’s Rostov. It comes amid Kiev’s “lies”
about humanitarian corridors, they said.

Thousands of eastern Ukrainians are flowing into Russia amid the
ongoing Kiev military operation, in which the cities occupied by
anti-government activists are being shelled and bombarded with heavy artillery and incendiary bombs. Even in large regional
centers like Lugansk, people no longer feel safe, as cases of
Ukrainian jets launching missiles at central city buildings in broad
daylight have been reported.

While many men and elderly people of eastern Ukraine are
unwilling to leave their native land, women with children are
flocking to Russia’s cities and regions to stay with relatives or
friends. Those who have neither are heading for refugee camps in
Rostov.

“According to the Federal Migration Service, more than 40,000
Ukrainian citizens have crossed into Rostov Region. As of today,
about 4,000 Ukrainians have been housed in temporary
accommodation centers,” a local Russian Emergencies Ministry
official, Aleksandr Naumov, told RT.

Reporting from the Russian-Ukrainian border, RT’s Paul Scott
interviewed several women, who said they left their husbands and
relatives behind to get the children away from shooting, bombing,
and air raids.

“We left because we are scared. The streets are empty – we
are afraid to let our children go outside. They too got scared
and nervous with the constant sound of gunfire and jets,” a
woman said.

Another female refugee, who fled the embattled city of Slavyansk
with two small children, shared the story of their desperate
escape.

“First we fled to Nikolayevka when the bombardment got
intense. They then started bombing Nikolayevka too and we fled to
Artyomovsk. In Artyomovsk, almost every night there were
shootings, explosions, we heard how Grad [multiple rocket
launchers] were fired at some places nearby...I can’t bear those
sounds anymore,” the woman said while crying.

People from other regions of eastern Ukraine “are in fact
fleeing because they know the story of Slavyansk,” another
woman, who crossed to Russia with her two sons and cats, told RT.
“The [Ukrainian] National Guard is simply bombarding the people,
killing children. We fear for our children above all, we want
them to be alive and well,” she explained.

One of her sons has been having nightmares because he heard a
shooting close by at night, the woman said.

According to the woman, her Ukrainian-speaking neighbors do not
understand her family and support Kiev’s military operation.
Moreover, the Ukrainian authorities and media are outright
“lying” about civilian corridors being organized for
refugees, she said.

“It is scary in this situation that the Ukrainian authorities,
the Ukrainian media are lying about humanitarian corridors being
organized – there is no such thing in reality. They are not
letting the people leave, and the bombardments never stop. They
don’t give a damn about us, the people of Donbas, Lugansk, they
just need the territory,” the woman said.

Watch RT’s Paul Scott talking with eastern Ukrainian
refugees

OSCE Secretary General Lamberto Zannier on Thursday visited
Rostov to meet with eastern Ukrainian refugees and hear their
accounts of Kiev’s military operation – a move which was welcomed
by Moscow. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that
talking to witnesses about the events in eastern Ukraine is
crucial for anyone wishing to get a “full, clear and
impartial picture” of what is happening there.

However, Zannier outraged the refugees after saying that newly
elected Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko “wants
prosperity for Ukraine and is ready to use every effort for
that.” The witnesses of Kiev’s military operation responded
by shouting: “No! This is not our president, we did not elect
him,” RIA Novosti reported.

Meanwhile, ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich on Friday
recorded a video address, in which he urged Kiev to stop the
military operation.

Yanukovich, who was born in Donetsk Region, said people there are
“shocked that instead of peace and stability [they got] a
bloody massacre” right at the start of Poroshenko’s term.

“It is unbearable to see those deaths, this hatred incited in
the not-so-long-ago peaceful country,” the ousted Ukrainian
leader said. Yanukovich wondered why European leaders kept
reminding him of the “unacceptability” of the use of
force against civilians in the wake of mayhem in Kiev, but are
now supporting the use of heavy artillery and jets against the
population of eastern Ukraine.

The Russian Foreign Minister on Friday held a phone conversation
with his Ukrainian counterpart, Andrey Deshchitsa, in which he
reminded Kiev of its responsibility for handling the humanitarian
situation in eastern Ukraine.

“Lavrov particularly stressed the importance of providing
humanitarian aid to the residents of southeastern Ukraine, the
creation of appropriate conditions for a safe passage of refugees
to the territory of the Russian Federation,” the Russian
Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Historical analogies may be inaccurate, but Americans may need to
look at their own civil war and compare it to what is happening in
Ukraine now. Today the US supports a murderous criminal adventure that
has little to do with unifying the country.

This assessment came
from Professor Stephen Cohen, prominent US scholar of Russian
studies and author, who advised George H.W. Bush in the late
1980s. He spoke to RT about the mistakes of the
consecutive American administrations in their Russia policies,
the worst crisis in decades that they led to and the
deterioration of political discourse in America that prevents
things from changing in Washington.

Cohen challenged the narrative of the Ukrainian events dominating
in the US, calling the military crackdown by the government an
“unwise, reckless, murderous, inhuman campaign that Kiev is
conduction against what are admittedly rebel provinces.”

“Lincoln never called the Confederacy terrorists,” the
scholar pointed out. “He always said, no matter how bad the
civil war was, fellow citizens he wanted to come back to the
union. Why is Kiev calling its own citizens terrorists? They are
rebels. They are protesters. They have a political agenda. Why
isn’t Kiev sending a delegation there to negotiate with
them?

“Their demands are not unreasonable. They want to elect their
own governors – we elect our own governors. They want a say on
where their taxes go – ‘no taxation without representation.’ We
know what that is,” Cohen said. “There are extremists
among them, but there are also people who simply want to live in
a Ukraine that is for everybody. And instead the Kiev army, with
the full support of the United States, is supporting this
assault.”

‘Kremlin an essential ally Washington pushes away’

What the US doing with Ukraine now is alienating arguably the
best potential ally it has now, Cohen said.

“I am convinced that the most essential partner for the
American national security in all of these areas from Iran to
Syria, Afghanistan and beyond is the Kremlin, currently occupied
by Putin. And the way the United States has treated Putin – I
would call it a betrayal of American national interest.”

Russia helped the Obama administration save its face in Syria,
where the president was pushed into bombing the country over
chemical weapons. It helped make bridges with the new leadership
of Iran to start the first serious negotiations in decades.

“Obama had within his grasp at last – because it was a failed
foreign policy presidency for Obama – two achievements that would
have been in American national interest. And they have slipped
away almost in proportion to the degree that Obama pushed Putin
away. Pushed Putin away so far that over Ukraine we [the US]
could be on the verge of war with Russia.”

Cohen blames the US, particularly the Clinton administration for
setting the world on a path that led it to the current
confrontation between the West and Russia.

“This is the playing out of American policy of expanding NATO
to Russia’s borders – for whatever reasons. It began with
Clinton, was continued under the second George Bush, has been
pushed by Obama. And that is the rooster that has come home to
roost.”

“Some people in the 1990s… warned that this was going to
happen. Now that it has, and the people would not take
responsibility for it,” he said. “They would not say
‘OK, we were wrong, we have to rethink policy.’ Instead they say
to people such as myself, ‘You are an apologist for Putin. You
are serving the Kremlin, you are not a patriot.’”

‘Obama isolated himself on foreign policy’

This lack of ability to change policies is evident in the current
administration, the scholar believes.

“I had lunch with two men much older than me, who had served
many presidents and who’ve known them personally. And they were
agreed that this president more than anyone in their lifetime
isolated himself on foreign policy.”

One anecdotal example Cohen cited is Obama’s refusal to talk to
former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

“I have heard – whether it’s true or not I don’t know – that
President Obama has declined to meet privately with Henry
Kissinger, who sees Putin twice a year. Kissinger probably knows
Putin better than any American statesmen alive today and who has
been consulted by so many presidents. Think what we might about
Kissinger’s past, but he has already declared his criticism of
American policy towards Russia. And Obama wouldn’t want to spend
an hour with him, asking ‘Are we doing something wrong? Are we
misperceiving the situation?’”

It’s no surprise that a leader, who doesn’t take into account
various viewpoint on a problem cannot take a rational decision on
tackling it, Cohen said.

“I ask for a president to be a person, who solicits the best
and most diverse learned views involving an existing crisis,
that’s all… A president has to bring in people with conflicting
views whose legitimacy is based on their knowledge, their
learning. A president who doesn’t do that is going to get us into
a crisis that Obama and Clinton got us into.”

‘The only way to break orthodoxy is with heresy’

Unfortunately for America, it’s not only the White house that
discourages debate now, but also American society in general, the
professor said.

“There is no debate of public opposition in this country
about this, unlike the situation 20-25 years ago, when we had
real debates and public fights,” he said. “I don’t know
if they [the mainstream media – RT] know the truth and therefore
are not telling the truth, or that they are just caught up in the
myths that had been attached to Russia since the end of the
Soviet Union.”

“An orthodoxy about Russia has formed in this country over 20
years,” he added. “And it’s not only wrong, it’s
reckless. It led us to this crisis in Ukraine… The only way you
can break orthodoxy is with heresy. Some of the things I say are
regarded as heretical, treasonous, unpatriotic. But heresy is a
good thing, when it’s needed.”

This situation is a sharp contrast to what happens in some other
democracies, which don’t hush a public debate on foreign policy
issues and don’t try to push opinions not liked by the political
establishment into the ‘fringe press’.

“Germany, a relatively new democracy with a past as bad as
Russia’s, could develop a democracy, where people can speak
openly and feely without fear of failing to get a promotion or
getting on an op-ed page. Two of three former German chancellors
have blamed Europe for the crisis in Ukraine – not Russia.”

“Where are our former presidents? We know why President
Clinton wouldn’t speak out, because he began that policy. But
where is President Carter? Where are the former secretaries of
state who pursued other policies? Why the silence? We’ve
developed, I fear, a political culture within the establishment
that is conformist. Even though the penalty of dissent in our
country is cheap, unlike in many other countries.”

The citizens of the United States still do not know why their
government destroyed Iraq. “National Security” will prevent them from
ever knowing. “National Security” is the cloak behind which hides the
crimes of the US government.

George Herbert Walker Bush, a former Director of the Central
Intelligence Agency who became President courtesy of being picked as
Ronald Reagan’s Vice President, was the last restrained US President.
When Bush the First attacked Iraq it was a limited operation, the goal
of which was to evict Saddam Hussein from his annexation of Kuwait.

Kuwait was once a part of Iraq, but a Western colonial power created
new political boundaries, as the Soviet Communist Party did in Ukraine.
Kuwait emerged from Iraq as a small, independent oil kingdom. http://www.csun.edu/~vcmth00m/iraqkuwait.html

According to reports, Kuwait was drilling at an angle across the
Iraq/Kuwait border into Iraqi oil fields. On July 25, 1990, Saddam
Hussein, with Iraqi troops massed on the border with Kuwait, asked
President George H. W. Bush’s ambassador, April Glaspie, if the Bush
administration had an opinion on the situation. Here is Ambassador
Glaspie’s reply:

“We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your
dispute with Kuwait. Secretary [of State James] Baker has directed me to
emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960’s that the
Kuwait issue is not associated with America.”

According to this transcript, Saddam Hussein is further assured by
high US government officials that Washington does not stand in his way
in reunifying Iraq and putting a halt to a gangster family’s theft of
Iraqi oil:

“At a Washington press conference called the next day, State
Department spokesperson Margaret Tutweiler was asked by journalists:

‘Has the United States sent any type of diplomatic message to the
Iraqis about putting 30,000 troops on the border with Kuwait? Has there
been any type of protest communicated from the United States
government?’

“to which she responded: ‘I’m entirely unaware of any such protest.’

“On July 31st, two days before the Iraqi invasion [of Kuwait], John
Kelly, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern affairs, testified
to Congress that the ‘United States has no commitment to defend Kuwait
and the U.S. has no intention of defending Kuwait if it is attacked by
Iraq’.”

Was this an intentional a set-up of Saddam Hussein, or did the Iraqi
takeover of Kuwait produce frantic calls from the Bush family’s Middle
Eastern business associates?

Whatever explains the dramatic, sudden, total change of position of
the US government, the result produced military action that fell short
of war on Iraq itself.

From 1990 until 2003 Iraq was acceptable to the US government.

Suddenly, in 2003 Iraq was no longer acceptable. We don’t know why.
We were told a passel of lies: Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass
destruction that were a threat to America. The spectre of a “mushroom
cloud over an American city” was raised by the National Security
Advisor. The Secretary of State was sent to the UN with a collection of
lies with which to build acceptance of US naked aggression against Iraq.
The icing on the cake was the claim that Saddam Hussein’s secular
government “had al Qaeda connections,” al Qaeda bearing the blame for
9/11.

As neither Congress nor the US media have any interest to know the
reason for Washington’s about face on Iraq, the “Iraq Threat” will
remain a mystery for Americans.

But the consequences of Washington’s destruction of the secular
government of Saddam Hussein, a government that managed to hold Iraq
together without the American-induced violence that has made the country
a permanent war zone, has been ongoing years of violence on a level
equal to, or in excess of, the violence associated with the US
occupation of Iraq.

Washington is devoid of humanitarian concerns. Hegemony is
Washington’s only concern. As in Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia,
Pakistan,Yemen, Ukraine, Syria, and Iraq, Washington brings only death,
and death is ongoing in Iraq.

On June 12, 500,000 residents of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city,
benefactors of Washington’s “freedom and democracy” liberation, fled the
city as the American trained army collapsed and fled under al Qaeda
attack. The Washington-installed government, fearing Baghdad is next,
has asked Washington for air strikes against the al Qaeda troops. Tikrit
and Kirkuk have also fallen. Iran has sent two battalions of
Revolutionary Guards to protect the Washington-installed government in
Baghdad.

(After this article was published, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani
dismissed the widespread news reports–Wall Street Journal, World
Tribune, The Guardian, Telegraph, CNBC, Daily Mail, Times of Israel,
etc.–that Iran has sent troops to help the Iraqi government. Once again
the Western media has created a false reality with false reports.)

Does anyone remember the propaganda that Washington had to overthrow
Saddam Hussein in order to bring “freedom and democracy and women’s
rights to Iraqis”? We had to defeat al Qaeda, which at the time was not
present in Iraq, “over there before they came over here.”

Do you remember the neoconservative promises of a “cakewalk war”
lasting only a few weeks, of the war only costing $70 billion to be paid
out of Iraqi oil revenues, of George W. Bush’s economic advisor being
fired for saying that the war would cost $200 billion? The true cost of
the war was calculated by economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard
University budget expert Linda Bilmes who showed that the Iraqi war cost
US taxpayers $3 trillion dollars, an expenditure that threatens the US
social safety net.

Do you remember Washington’s promises that Iraq would be put on its
feet by America as a democracy in which everyone would be safe and women
would have rights?

What is the situation today?

Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq, has just been overrun by al
Qaeda forces. These are the forces that Washington has claimed a number
of times to have completely defeated.

These “defeated” forces now control Iraq’s second largest city and a
number of provinces. The person Washington left in charge of Iraq is on
his knees begging Washington for military help and air support against
the Jihadist forces that the incompetent Bush regime unleashed in the
Muslim world.

What Washington has done in Iraq and Libya, and is trying to do in
Syria, is to destroy governments that kept Jihadists under control.
Washington faces the prospect of a Jihadist government encompassing Iraq
and Syria. The Neoconservative conquest of the Middle East is becoming
an al Qaeda conquest.

Washington has opened Pandora’s Box. This is Washington’s accomplishment in the Middle East.

Even as Iraq falls to al Qaeda , Washington is supplying the al Qaeda
forces attacking Syria with heavy weapons. It is demonized Iran that
has sent troops to defend the Washington-installed regime in Baghdad!
Is it possible for a country to look more foolish than Washington looks?

One conclusion that we can reach is that the arrogance and hubris
that defines the US government has rendered Washington incapable of
making a rational, logical decision. Megalomania rules in Washington.

About Me

B.S. in Physics, Carnegie-Mellon University, 1960 Ph.D. in Physics, Brown University, 1966. Fellow, American Physical
Society. Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Fellow, American Ceramic Society. Member, Geological Society of America, Research Physicist at Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), Washington, DC,
1967-2001. Fulbright-García Robles Fellow at Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México, 1997. Invited Professor of Research at Universités
de Paris-6 & 7, Lyon-1, et St-Etienne (France) and Tokyo Institute
of Technology, 2000-2004. Adjunct Professor of Materials Science and
Engineering, University of Arizona, 2004-2005. Consultancy: impactGlass
research international, 2005-present.
Winner, one national and two international research awards and honored
by Brown University with a "Distinguished Graduate School Alumnus
Award." Author, 198 papers in peer-reviewed journals and books, Principal Author of 114 of these.